I Love New York in June (and May and July and August) – How ‘bout you? Part 1

I enjoy New York City. Probably because I don’t live there. But I love visiting. Yes, it’s crowded and hectic and often smells like the inside of my own colon, but it’s New York City. The more we visit, the more familiar I become with this Mecca and the more I can pretend I’m a native. I’m particularly fond of smacking cab hoods and shouting “I’m walking heah!” then diving for the sidewalk as the cabbies gun the engine and chase me into the nearest Tim Horton’s.

This year we’ve made multiple trips to NY for a variety of reasons. One of the summer’s first was to celebrate Justin (Skin Crawl’s) Cthulu-themed birthday party, which also afforded us the opportunity to join Scooter McCrae and Alex Kuciw for lunch at a tiny little Irish pub during one of the key World Cup games. They were on their way to see Eastern Condors, hosted by Sammo Hung. It’s difficult to discuss classics of New Wave Hong Kong cinema while drunken hooligans cheer a never-ending pass.

(And if I may be snarky here, having witnessed “football frenzy” in London during an Arsenal-Manchester U. game, I have to say American “soccer” hooligans just look nerdy. Not a Vinnie Jones among the group nearest our table in NY. The butchest among them would have been hard-pressed to pull off a Casey Siemaszko.)

A few weeks later, we were back in the Big Apple for the premiere of the Diggerfilms documentary Under the Scares. This was a special event for us for a number of reasons. It marked the first time we visited Brooklyn by ourselves and it was the first time that I realized “Tribecca” used to be called “Hell’s Kitchen”, and that they are not separate places.

While we had visited Brooklyn once before, in the company of Alan Rowe Kelly, Scooter McCrae and Mike Gingold, that had been a particularly lovely part of the Borough. A place where trees were not only reported to grow, but could be witnessed growing. For the Under the Scares weekend, we stayed in the “auto body repair shop” district of Brooklyn, making it a considerably different experience. This section, a multi-cultural area, boasted a vehicle garage approximately every twenty-six feet, run by dangerous-looking men of every nationality. Further along, we discovered a heavenly-smelling bakery from which emanated the shrieking calls of many exotic birds. Unable to locate either the birds or the entrance, we could only draw the logical conclusion that flamingos were making fresh bread somewhere within the depth of that pre-war brick bunker. And if they weren’t making the bread, certainly the self-same flamingos were being slaughtered in the horrific Asian poultry garage further down the block. Suffice to say, the smell from that location was far from heavenly. Further south, if you get my meaning.

We wiled away many a tense hour waiting for the Diggerfilms guys to arrive. We were sharing a hotel room with them and were unable to check in. Parked outside the Comfort Inn, Amy and I read, listened to the radio and daydreamed about bygone days when we were not parked outside of a Brooklyn-area Comfort Inn, waiting for our Canadian compadres. (Amigos? Hommes-boys?)

Fretting not, once Steve Villeneuve, Nancy Tellier and Dave Aubin (with Simon Geraghty making an appearance later) arrived, we whisked ourselves away to midtown Manhattan via the reliable underground, aka, “The Subway”. Possibly the “F”; I forget now.

For the unwashed masses among you who may be unaware of Under the Scares, it’s a documentary about the world of independent filmmaking, produced by the fine folks at Diggerfilms, aka “The Guys Who Shot Demon Divas and the Lanes of Damnation who speak mainly French to freak me out”. That’s how I know them, anyway. They’re very talented, stylish filmmakers in their own right, but I like to give everyone I know a “me” frame of reference. Speaking of me, Under the Scares doesn’t have enough me in it.

It does, however, have a lot of Amy, Debbie Rochon, Frank Hennenlotter, Rod Gudino, Herschel Gordon Lewis, Robert Kurtzman, Gary Jones and a ton of Happy Cloud Pictures movie clips. Some of the latter were used ironically, however. (Narrator: “Sometimes low budget filmmakers can only hire their family and friends.” Cut to basement scene from The Resurrection Game.) Still, there’s a lot of HCP love, despite the near-dearth of me time, so I can forgive.

The Diggerfilms consortium was working on Under the Scares when we first met them, years ago at Robyn Griggs’ second Twisted Nightmare Weekend in Ohio. It was at this show that Amy, Debbie and I (among others) were interviewed for the doc. Having been previously solicited via email, we walked into the reserved conference room fully expecting to find a group of reprobates, broken-down DV camera in hand, asking us the usual questions like “How did you get started in filmmaking?” and “Can I borrow some money for food?”

Instead, we found a group of very professional reprobates (from the French meaning “reprobates”), a three-point lighting set up, lavaliere microphones and a snazzy prosumer HD camera. The questions were very well-thought out and prepared specifically for each subject, which I thought was classy, even though they were delivered in accents so thick I needed them to repeat themselves several times. (Actually, I didn’t need them too, but since camera operator Hugo Bissonnet was, while neatly dressed and purple-y coiffed, obviously hung over, asking him to repeat himself—“louder, please!”—was vastly entertaining. To me.)

Over the next couple of years, the group (sometimes a quartet, sometimes a quintet, sometimes a sextet, if you can believe it) worked diligently on the doc, intercutting the interviews with footage from their first film, Stories of a Gravedigger, as well as behind-the-scenes from that very project. Also taking clips from the films of their subjects, the finished project, Under the Scares, is a very informative and insightful look at the independent horror film scene. Not afraid to poke fun at themselves, the doc puts their pitfalls up on screen alongside their successes, making it clear to the viewer that filmmaking is not only hard work, but far from an exact science, and any notion of “magic” is dispelled almost immediately. Not discouraging by any means, the message of the movie is clear: before you attempt your own project, try and have a clear idea of what you want it to be, what you expect to happen, what you have to do, and what you will do should any of those things above not come together. It’s funny and it’s realistic.

There still isn’t enough of my interview, but that’s really neither here nor there. They keep telling me that the second disc of the DVD release will be nothing but me. When have they ever lied to me?

Seeing Under the Scares for the first time in the swanky Tribeca theater with a lot of friends and plenty of colleagues was just the frosting. Prior to the showing were a number of trailers—Suzi Lorraine’s upcoming Won Ton Baby and their own nourish dark comedy short Dead Pussy—and immediately following was a trip to a local indoor/outdoor bar/restaurant where we wiled away the rest of the night, discussing film and future ambitions.

As the night wore on the attendees from both ends of North America began to hear the call of the mild. Amy, Steve, Nancy, Dave and I were among the last to leave, staggering back to the subway to whisk us back to the comfort that Brooklyn was sure to provide. It was about three AM when we reached the aromatic platform and bought our tickets, wondering who these grade-school kids were and why they were loitering in midtown Manhattan so late, or if they knew if the crackhead giggling to himself by the change machine was likely to attack and eat us.

The highlight of the evening, indeed the cherry on the sundae, was seeing the toll a night on the town can take on caution-free adults. None of us were suffering, but earlier in the day, we’d been made aware that quite a bit of our nation’s finest navy men were on leave. We witnessed many a sailor wandering through the city with arms draped over the shoulders of very decidedly non-movie hookers. These were fresh-faced men on their way to and from exotic locales, spending time with women whose normal locales were obviously less-than exotic. On the platform opposite us, two officers in their finest dress blues awaiting a train to take them to the last exit to Brooklyn. To the astonishment of our Neighbors from the North, one of the officers was heaving mightily into a horrid trash can, making appalling noises heard even above the squeal of the passing non-stop express trains. I refrained from leading them in a round of “O Canada”, as I sensed things had already reached maximum-awkward.

Dragging ourselves back to beloved Brooklyn, assuring ourselves that our car not only remained we’d left it, but was still in one piece, we collapsed into our reserved beds and allowed the highs and lows of the day to wash us away to slumber.

(Hit the official Under the Scares site to see when this awesome doc with too little of me might be playing by you.)

(All photos swiped from Steve Villeneuve's Facebook page. Go there. Friend him. Speak French. See if I care.)

More words about the JONAH HEX movie than it's really worth...

 

Thanks to Todd at New Dimension Comics, Amy and I got to see an advanced preview of Jonah Hex. Since my father is a big western fan, I grew up with the Jonah Hex character. He’s a tough-as-nails bounty hunter that looks to most like Clint Eastwood but to me resembled Kirk Douglas. His defining features: a Confederate officer’s uniform and a hideously-scarred face thanks to a run-in with some Apaches. Knowing what I do about the comic book business and the constant urge for corporate revisioning (I’m told now Hex trolls a post-apocalyptic wasteland bereft of plastic surgery, to which info I can only sigh), I was certain that this movie adaptation would have a touch of the supernatural and more than a touch of the illogical. Unless a character is as well-defined as Batman or Spider-Man (and even when they are), comic book heroes don’t stand much of a chance on screen by themselves. They have to be fancied up. Jonah Hex is a fringe character (brought back to life in comics a few years back by the wonderfully awesome Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray), a niche character. Have to make him sexy so the kids will buy him. Have to make him “cool”.

I’ve raged against “cool” before. I’m as indifferent to cool as I am aggravated by “hip”. Don’t care for either of these things because they’re fleeting and insubstantial. The Wild One was so “cool” in its day that it inspired generations of Hell’s Angels. Show a modern cycle jockey The Wild One today and they’ll beat you to death with the DVD box. “Cool” is also a replacement for genuine. If you concentrate too much on “cool”, you loose the substance. But because Hollywood is all about the opening weekend, “cool” has to be layered on by the trowelful. Hell, audiences are pigs and “cool” is the slop—just dump it on them. Make it fast, flashy and noisy. If something sticks, all the better, but if it doesn’t, well, the studios got your ten bucks, what do they care what you Tweet afterward?

But comic book movies have been pretty good recently. I’ve managed to squeeze satisfaction out of the mis-managed likes of Daredevil and Ghost Rider.  And Iron Man, with a title character I never cared about, ranks among my favorite big-screen adaptations. (With that in mind, I feel differently about Samuel L. Jackson Samuel L. Jacksoning all over Nick Fury because, well, he wants to make the character “cool”. Although to me, the character was already cool. He didn’t need to be Samuel L. Jacksoned. He was cool in and of himself. Real cool—not that fleeting, temporary kind… And don’t make the “But he’s not David Hasselhoff!” argument because that’s just stupid.) So I thought to myself, out loud and in Amy’s direction, as long as I enter the theater knowing that dumb was coming my way, but covered in sticky-sweet cool, maybe I’ll be okay.

Another strike in the movie’s negative column, though, was that Jonah Hex would not be screened for critics. Which meant that the Studios considered a screening to be a suicide move. And that’s never a good sign. That means they want the audiences to be disappointed by the movie, not the review. Then I read that the running time was a mere 81 minutes. In an age where the trailers run slightly over two hours, 81 minutes seems like a cut-scene from the coming-soon video game. And since the movie has flown under my radar for the most part, I only recently learned about the re-shooting, re-tinkering, additional Megan Fox insertions, then deletions, and an army of uncredited screenwriters brought aboard during the actual production, I started to think that maybe forewarned wasn’t nearly forearmed enough. Maybe I’d need a Gallagher poncho in the theater because god only knew how much cool was going to get splashed all over me.

But the ticket was free. Even if I hate it, I already had my refund. As for the “but it’s 81 minutes of my life I’ll never get back” lament, to be honest, I’d likely spend those 81 minutes watching a movie anyway. And with my recent track record, they’ll be 81 agonizing minutes anyway, dedicated to the survival of something cinematically-yucky anyway. So, really, I was already ahead because I liked the Jonah Hex character and I really like Josh Brolin, or, as I like to call him, “the saving grace of The Goonies who isn’t Robert Davi”. Josh Brolin saved the Americanized Nightwatch… if only he’d been there to rescue the Danish Nightwatch.

Advanced screenings have changed since I was a wide-eyed innocent. Growing up, you’d get a photocopied flier in the mail, good for “two passes” to something studios didn’t have a lot of faith in—Tremors, The Best of Times, Gorillas in the Mist are three I remember hitting this way. Nowadays, the passes are professionally-printed and delivered in stacks to specialty stores, often with a bar-code that will be scanned at the theater to ensure that it’s genuine. So that happened. And then we had to run the security gauntlet. One designate looked through bags and purses while two more wanded people for… well, I didn’t know. So I asked the guy, point blank, who was wanding me, “What are you looking for? Should I be worried about getting shanked at the concession stand?”

My keys set off the wand. So did my change. And my Swiss Army knife. But no, they were more concerned about our cell phones. I could have been packing a bazooka and Amy could’ve been carrying a silverback gorilla with social anxiety disorder, but so long as neither of those things captured video, these flacks couldn’t have cared less. Which made me think that the stakes were exceptionally high here. DC and Legendary produced the thing, but Warner Brothers was releasing it. Warner Brothers, already on the ropes with the smelling salts beneath its nose and the defibrillator at the ready, couldn’t risk another failure-due-to-piracy, despite—or because of—having what already seemed like a loser on their hands. They needed to squeeze money out of this thing--$47 million had already been spent. They needed that back.

Except that they’d gambled on an obscure character, set in a Western period, who didn’t have superpowers, was known for his gray-area morality (if he was known at all), and sported an unsexy facial scar. You could hear the suits, by the time the credits rolled during their executive screening, asking each other, “Why did we do this again?”

And earlier in the day, before heading to the theater, I read this bit of info: ‘Brolin exclaimed to MTV News[,] "And then I had a moment a week later and I thought why is it awful? Maybe the thing to do is to do the most awful movie I can find."’

It seems that Neveldine and Taylor, the sugar-addled Red Bull addicts behind the incomprehensible Crank series, had dropped out of directing the movie back in 2008. It was then handed to Jimmy Hayward, whose big screen introduction had been Horton Hears a Who.

Still… it was free.

Amy had suggested we get their early and I wish I’d listened and not dallied at a rain-damaged Barnes and Noble for ten minutes. By the time we stripped down to our sock-garters for security and reminded ourselves we were there for a movie and not a flight the theater was filled to the rafters with Internet reviewers, comic store employees and random teenage mouth-breathers. Two of the three in front of us had just discovered Let the Right One In via On Demand and were attempting to describe it to the lone girl in their row that both hoped to bang but were resigned to the knowledge that she was going home with the usher with the bad skin but his own car. “It’s like Twilight only, like, deeper.” Said Thing One.

“I loved the part when the one kid was in the pool and you just saw his head,” said Thing Two.

“I’m totally not into Twilight,” said Girl Thing. “I loved the books, but Taylor Laughton [sic] or whatever is cross-eyed and not Jacob.”

“Yeah,” agreed Things One and Two.

It’s difficult to attempt suicide with a cell phone. I mean, yeah, I still had my pocket knife, but since security was so afraid of my phone, it felt like an implement of destruction. It wasn’t. It was still a phone.

And, again, the screening was free. And we got a cool extended Inception trailer out of it.

As expected, Jonah Hex is a wreck, but it is, definitely, a fun wreck. The script and structure is so muddled that about 40 of those 81 minutes are dedicated to flashbacks—the same flashbacks. In order to explain Hex further, we are treated to a stylized animated back story that fills us in on his relationship to the Crow Indians, who brought him back to life from “near death”, which enables him to talk to the dead. New to me, but I was still with it. His nemesis from the comics, Quentin Turnbull, as gnashed by John Malkovich, was just as evil son of a bitch as he was in the old comics, but unafraid to kill anyone. Large amounts of anyone. Folks hooted and hollered when Megan Fox appeared on screen—a woman I find so shallow that if converted to 3D, she’d still only make it as far as Flatland—but she had precious little to do. She’s a classic frontier whore in a one-whore town who has somehow pioneered the art of eyebrow tweezing and lip gloss application. Any hope I had that this would be closer to Deadwood than Blazing Saddles went out the window the minute she showed up.

Oh boy, the cool just kept a-piling on, though. Hex rides into town after his three backstories dragging three corpses behind his horse. When the sheriff attempts to renege on the bounty, Hex fires up twin 50 cal gattling guns strapped to either side of his horse. Beltless gattlings, with magic bullets, that somehow manage to mow down only what he’s pointing at and at no time blowing off the horse’s head. Or searing the horse’s sides. Fine. I have friends who would view that scene and sum it up with “It was awesome!” while abandoning any sense of logic, the ideal audience for a movie like this. Since my new medication was kicking in, I was able to jettison my disbelief.

Even when he’s presented with a pair of custom-made crossbow pistols that fire sticks of dynamite. Even when his ability to raise the dead seems not only silly, but reveals itself to be utterly pointless. Just as Megan Fox’s entire character is superfluous (and despite her tough talk, this woman would not have lasted a day in the post-Civil War frontier and would have been raped to death by someone who looked like Jack Elam). I was able to ignore the fact that the second-in-command Irish bad guy sported facial tattoos far too intricate for the time period, the application of such, in that time, would have likely killed him. Even Turnbull’s central MacGuffin—so angry is he at America, waging the war among the brothers, apparently, just to kill his son that he combines a Civil War battleship with the Guns of Navarone to build an industrial-age Death Star—didn’t strike me as overly silly. At this point, I was expecting the laws of gravity to disappear and was just happy the characters cast shadows. That the credits rolled without my seeing a single saloon Pepsi machine should have made my heart soar.

With the three corpses dragged behind the horse, I knew what I was in for. Hayward and company were making a modern-day Spaghetti Western. This is a cheap way of making a “modern” western and imbibing it with as much cool as possible. John Ford rose from the grave just to commit suicide when the Italians usurped the Western. Because the tropes of the American West as defined by Ford, Hawks—even Anthony Mann—were cast aside by Leone and his like for favor of the “revisionist” Western. While this led to the “demystifying” of the Western, it also led to the inclusion of grotesqueries, amoral anti-heroes and nonsensical gun battles filled with the type of ballistics that gave the Warren Commission its gravity.

When modern modern westerns, like the remake of 3:10 to Yuma, include nonsensical style over substance, the producers quote the Spaghetti Western philosophies. It’s a way to justify “cool”. If you want a shoot-from-the-hip, lives-by-his-own-code, larger-than-life hero, you have to go with Eastwood or Franco Nero. Today’s audiences just don’t dig Robert Mitchum or John Wayne. And like anyone would believe that It’s a Wonderful Life guy could be a badass (like in Naked Spur or Bandolero). And all of this is fine, really. But let me make a parallel that some of you will understand: saying modern Westerns are better when they’re like the Italians’ is like saying that zombies are better when they wear oatmeal on their faces and fight sharks. There’s more than room for both, but you can’t tell me the latter is better than the former.

Anyway, from the flashy photography to the heavy-metal Mastodon musical score, I was dripping with cool by the time the lights came up. The Three Things in front of us who laughed and bounced all the way through proclaimed, “That was stupid!” as they left. As they no doubt viewed me as one of the elderly, I had nothing to add. If “stupid” is the new “cool”, it just means I don’t watch enough Jersey Shore to understand that.

For all the stupid/cool that dripped out of Jonah Hex, I will say that James Brolin was terrific. His make-up is distracting and looks incredibly painful, but that’s what it was designed to do. If Jonah Hex had been played straighter, I think the make-up would have vanished for me, leaving only the character and the situation. He brought the scenes to life and it’s a good thing that he’s in virtually every frame. Without Brolin, Hex would have collapsed under the weight of its own uber-ness. With him, though, it’s a pretty entertaining, if disposable, comic book western. I hope it makes a bucket of money and stays off Pirate Bay for at least the rest of the weekend (so far, though, a couple of cams have already appeared), in the hopes that a superior sequel can be crafted. But as it stands, it was definitely worth the price we paid for it, both the free ticket and the blathering of the Things Trio. It’s no replacement for The Searchers—or even Duck, You Sucker!—but it isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen. 

 

New Shoot: "The Night We Didn't Read Myra Breckenridge"

Once again, my body has taken it upon itself to remind me that I’m not as young as I used to be. All because I had the audacity to shoot a short movie. Lousy body.

A quick little “prequel” to Demon Divas has been in the works since our first screening of the feature at Cinema Wasteland. While the movie went over better than we’d hoped, the majority of the audience really responded to the Book Club characters played by Gwendolyn, Stacy Bartlebaugh-Gmys and, especially, Bill Homan as the bizarre and flamboyant Max. Knowing that we wanted to do a few things to round out the inevitable DVD, we started kicking around ideas for a companion film. Things gelled for me, storywise, with a visit to Scarehouse in Etna.

As we’ve long espoused, Scarehouse is an awesome haunted attraction outside of Pittsburgh. I’ve championed this haunt for years, not just because the owners, Scott and Barb and Wayne Simmons are good friends of ours, but because it’s just quite simply an awesome and elaborately-put together experience. One room in particular caught my imagination: a library being slowly demolished by some Elder God—tentacles bursting through the book shelves and a giant mechanized eye peering through a gaping hole in the wall. I love this room. By the time we finished our trip through the rest of the haunt, I had a skeleton of a story in mind.

Obviously, I don’t want to give too much away… so I won’t. Suffice to say we designed a script that could be shot in a maximum of two days, in two locations, with a minimum of characters and crew. It would be a down-to-the-basics shoot—short, quick and funny. What made this movie different for us is that it would be the first time we’d shoot a sequel/prequel with characters we’d used before. We’ve done little Necro-Phil promos, of course, and I’ve done continuations of things in different mediums (the upcoming Severe Injuries follow-up graphic novel, for instance), but I saw this is a new little challenge to see if we could reproduce some of the magic from Demon Divas in a new setting. Albeit goofy and way more over-the-top.

The Simmonses were already onboard and would provide anything we needed, including a trio of really talented make-up artists (Chris, Dejah and Dale), and since their pre-production prior to the Halloween season lasts pretty much from February to September, they’d be at the site anyway, so long as we didn’t mind a little hammering and sawing while we worked. Since that was something we’d gotten used to while shooting Splatter Movie at the Hundred Acres Manor, we were completely in our element. We’ve also gotten pretty good at ADR over the years, so even if that proved to be a necessity (and it did) it wouldn’t be a problem.

The short, under the working title of “The Night We Didn’t Read Myra Breckenridge”, really harkened back to our salad days—bringing our friends together for a quick shoot in exchange for gas money and doughnuts, after weeks of emails trying to nail down a day when six people would actually be available at the same time (with varying time-limitations), everyone chipping in to wear multiple hats as cast and crew, and making-it-up-as-you-go style of filming utilizing the limitations of the environment to our advantage.

The main drawback came on Monday, however, when I failed to reach Tonerwoods’ Jason Thompson in time to utilize him as DP. Selfish bastard decided to take a paying job instead! So I was more or less on my own as my own DP and camera. Now, as I’ve whined ad nauseum, I’ve studied cinematography, I know the principals of good lighting, I even have a decent lighting kit, I just hate doing it. There’s no joy comparable to having a lighting crew at your disposal to make everything pretty. My lighting style can be summed up by “enough light to get an exposure, preferably with proper shadows”. But, fortunately, I wasn’t alone. In addition to Gwen, Stacy (but not Gwen Stacy) and Bill, Amy was doing her usual acting and producing and crewing, Michael Varrati and Mike and Carolyn Haushalter were all available to make the requisite magic.

Another drawback, however, was shooting HD to P2 cards. I am not an expert at this. In fact, the only other times I’ve worked with this type of technology were when shooting other Demon Divas inserts. In those cases, I was dealing with seconds-long inserts, and nothing of real length or involvement. When the Diggerfilms hommes shot DD for us, they had two cameras and card-readers at their disposal. There was no loss of productivity during footage capture. I had only our HVX, a laptop and hard drive. So every fifteen minutes’ worth of footage required a real-time dump accompanied by panic. I had redundancies in place—after transferring, I burned the shots to DVD as a back-up, in case the hard drive decided to fail on the way home, but it was still nerve wracking to the extreme. As Bill and I discussed, even back in our film days, if a roll got damaged or came back out of focus, at least we still had it. The damaged reel still existed. A failed hard drive after a wiped card eliminates all proof that we did anything at all. And since I seem to be an enemy of all technology, these possibilities weighed heavily on my mind throughout.

On the happiness side, though, we had awesome sets to run amok on (even with the added joy of trying to find the hidden outlets to tie into with lights), outstanding make-up effects and cool-as-hell mechanical coolness providing coolitude. The coolness level was upped even higher due to the presence of our star, courtesy of Tom Sullivan and Pat Reese, one of the original Evil Dead Necronomicons (which should give you a hint of the plot).

But the nice thing was the feeling that we were back to the basics, doing something for fun. It’s been more than a year since we shot anything substantial and since we have a big project a ‘brewin’ for the fall, it was essential to get back into practice, particularly as the new project will have to be professionally structured and regimented. This short was loose and collaborative—everyone tossed out ideas, making the scenes the best they could be under the restraints we had (space for people, lights, choreography—everything had to be done right then on the spot).

This required forcing my body into odd positions to get the best angles. Rolling on the floor, using the Bill-built steadicam when possible, balancing, crouching, using my back to boom and tilt. By the end of the shoot, I wanted to curl up and die but my spine wouldn’t allow it. But we finished on schedule and the footage really does look terrific. As much as I hate production, it was definitely a satisfying experience.

We have one short day of pick-ups ahead of us to shoot Bill’s character’s wrap-around, but once that’s done, the Demon Divas project will be complete and the official DVD will likely see a release at October’s Cinema Wasteland. By then, we’ll hopefully be neck-deep in the next feature and starting forward on Happy Cloud Pictures’ second thirteen years. 

 Photo by Carolyn Haushalter

I Think, Therefore I Am...I think...

I’m a professional writer. I know this because I fill out a tax return every year and say good-bye to a large chunk of my hard-earned pay wrested from the hands of publishers and producers. I’ve been a more-or-less pro writer for a little under fifteen years and I’ve written for multiple mediums including screen, radio, print and web. For “fun” I also write this here blog (and this here blog). Recently, it was brought to my attention that bloggers are not “real writers”. To which I say, with my trademark perspicacity, “Huh?”

Now, I’m not a big fan of the word “blog”. It’s not because it’s a portmanteau word—I love those, particularly at brillig, when the slithy toves gyre and gimble in the wabe—but because it’s kind of an ugly little thing. Short for “web log”, it was shortened by mankind’s need to abbreviate things. To me, “blog” always seemed too close a relative to “blob” and “bog”, both shapeless mires in which nouns (persons, places and things) get sucked into and trapped. So out of sheer pretentiousness, I usually refer to these here blogs as “columns”. Because that’s what we used to aspire to back in the days when we were still “print journalists”, back in the days when there was still print. My journalistic heroes were many but my top favorite was Harlan Ellison, simply because he insisted on filling his columns with whatever he wanted to write. Harlan did that because his interests and opinions were many. I wanted to do that because I’m lazy and easily distracted. But I digress… Oh, and I like to digress.

So I’ve always treated this “blog” as a full-fledged legitimate “column” for which I am not paid therefore must adhere to no restrictions. This is the freedom all writers yearn for. If only there was some money attached…

But as an acolyte of the written word, I tend to read as many web articles as print. If it’s well put together and thought out and the letters are placed in the correct order to form sentences describing something I’m interested in, I’ll read it. I’m a little more anal than others of my demographic—I’ll spell-check texts and email before sending; I use full words in my Tweets (another word I don’t particularly care for)—but I’m not a media snob. Print, web, film, video—whatever. The message is what’s important.

So imagine my surprise when I was informed, by no less than a dozen sources within a single fortnight, that “bloggers” were not real writers, and should therefore be ignored.

Granted, there is no shortage of semi- to sub- to il-literate “blogs” out there, that read as if written by many monkeys short of an infinity, typing with their elbows, but you had that in the print days too. Ever try to slog through US magazine? There have been full issues printed without vowels, for Chrissakes! What makes a blogger less of a writer than a print author? Is it all about money? I know a goodly number of web writers who are paid for their work. Are they “real” writers because of the paycheck? What if they’re subliterate lesser primates but still land some dough from indiscriminate employers? Still valid because of the dollar sign and decimal?

Which is not to say that I haven’t ranted and raved and flapped my arms about how subliterates stormed the web with the intensity of the Normandy Invasion and devalued the written word. That those willing to write for free have shoved us “professionals” aside and unless you were already Neil Gaiman when the tide came in you’re out of luck because the “talent gap” has narrowed to the width of an unbent staple and the battle cry of agents has become “Not Accepting New Clients At This Time Unless You’re Stephanie Meyer”.  Or Dan Brown (oh how I long to secure a position to pick fleas from their prose).

But the jealous and/or frustrated howling aside, what makes a print writer “real” and a web writer “not real” ? And does that mean they’re actually imaginary? In which case, can I get my job at Cinefantastique back? Obviously, talent was removed from the equation long before Harold Robbins hit the best-seller lists, long before Ain’t It Cool News was launched, so what are the qualifications? I’m still a “professional writer”, but the majority of my writing is done for either non-paying publications, websites or, even more often, my own gratification. But if so much of my work appears here, in “blog” form, does that devalue my status? And, if not, why not? What yardstick are we using here? The late Daniel Robert Epstein ran his own blog and conducted high-water mark interviews for Suicide Girls.com, a site that was popularized by women wearing only tattoos and facial jewelry. So was he not a real writer because of the blog? Was he a real writer because of the interviews? Or does it really not friggin’ matter?

I think I’ll continue to smugly judge people by the quality of their work. Crap is crap, whether it’s virtual or print. The reverse is true too. If you care enough about your work to ensure it’s worth reading, then, I think, that’s what makes you a “real writer”.

I return you now to your “real” life.

Return from the Full Moon Tattoo and Horror Convention

Last weekend, Amy and I made the seemingly endless trek to the Full Moon Tattoo and Horror Convention in Nashville. We were accompanied two-thirds of the way by a vicious storm testing our windshield wipers to their very limits. The second we crossed into Tennessee, however, the sun took up residence in our backseat and remained there until we arrived at our hotel. The next day, a tornado touched down, swept away some visiting whiny Kansas farm girls and left the hotel without lights for a little more than hour. Not letting little things like threats to life and limb deter them, horror fans flocked from far and near to join the festivities and hobnob with the likes of Bill Moseley, Debbie Rochon, Bill Johnson, Caroline Williams, Ari Lehman and, from Repo! The Genetic Opera, the Graverobber himself, Terence Zdunich, who doesn’t care how you pronounce his name provided you’re friendly.

Except for a secluded show called ConCarolinas, this was the deepest south we’d been as guests at a convention, thanks to the support and lovely human beingness of Ben and Stacy Dixon. While horror and tattoos are universal ice breakers, I have to admit that the majority of stand-up comedians have it right: there is a difference between the Yankees and Confederates.

I’m not talking about the obvious stereotypes like self-proclaimed rednecks or white supremacists because, frankly, you’ll run into those no matter where you go. We live within spitting distance of West Virginia and from our porch you can hear the banjos. Sure, there was the guy walking around with a t-shirt emblazoned with the Pillsbury Doughboy in Nazi gear proclaiming “White Flour”, and I complimented him for the adorable racism. And there was the charming fellow who liked everything Clive Barker did, “But I heard he was gay, so I don’t know about him any more.” And the three shaved-headed gentlemen who asked me, very discreetly, if Splatter Movie had any of them “colored actors” in it. To which I responded, “No sir. Splatter Movie contains 30% fewer blacks than any other movie.” Which must not have been a high enough percentage because they left the movie sitting where it was, untouched and unloved.

No, I’m referring to the fact that, as a majority, the people who visited this show were by and large the nicest con attendees I’d ever encountered. Mayhap there’s a sarcasm shortage in the South, or maybe manners come free with tanks of gas, but I’ve never been to a show where I was called “Sir” so often I started to wonder if I’d acquired some sort of clandestine knighthood. Little kids, old people, that mishegoss of age range in between—all of them “Sir”’ed me up and down for three full days. Amy got “Miss” and “Ma’am” a lot (I only got a couple of “Ma’am”’s). People held doors for us poor emburdened vendors and guests. And even the mouth-breathing morlocks that infest every convention seemed to have their clue-free crassness under control. The nearest we got to insults (aside from the good-natured ones from George, the vendor of hockey masks next to us) was from an awkward guy who told us flat out he wouldn’t buy one of our movies because “I ain’t never heard of ‘em. They’re not from Hollywood, huh? Those always look better.” So for the first time in my long career as a merchandise-warmer, I did not have to cheerfully order a single attendee to “get the fuck away from my table”. It was a nice change of pace.

It’s still not the best economic climate to do too many shows in a year, of course. I heard a goodly number of folk complaining about varying states of unemployment and there wasn’t too much money to go around (particularly not after one certain guest’s price-gouging for autographs), which was a common complaint among the vendors. Because of the timeframes required by the tattoo artists, Full Moon is a marathon show as well—11am to 11pm on Saturday, for instance, that left most of us bug-eyed and twitchy by the day’s end—so there’s more time to kill painfully and bloodily than the average convention. But if the folks weren’t buying, they were at least talking.

Sure, we got a couple of plants here or there, yammering away about Freddy vs. Jason in the same tone-of-voice you’d discuss fiduciary dividends, until you’re ready to pepper-spray them and call for security. But for the most part we were visited by nice people who shared similar interests and wanted to pass the time by sharing thoughts and feelings about gore and horror.

Among the topics discussed:

Remakes. As inevitable as inexact change and body-odor, the remake argument was debated by more than its share of folks on either end of the spectrum including, for the first time in my recent memory, a couple of older guys (as in “close to my age”) who are actually for the darned things. I’m used to hearing the Generation Shrug crowd extolling the virtues of the new Texas Chain Saw movies over the original ones, claiming they cannot connect to any movie made prior to their recent birthdate, but very few old timers ever come down on the ‘Pro’ side of remakes or sequels. There were a number of hardcore guys who were simply beside themselves with glee over the impending release of the new Nightmare on Elm Street movie and had valid arguments for wanting to see it, slickness aside. They wanted to see the story updated, they wanted Freddy’s origin and new CGI-enhanced make-up. “The stories should be updated,” one told me. “They’re our society’s fairy tales. Everything gets adapted for the new generations. Otherwise, I guess, we’d just be running in place.”

My own feeling about remakes has been well-documented in these very virtual pages. Basically, it falls into the categories of “There’s nothing I can do about it” and “I’ve got better things to worry about”. I bristle as much as the next guy over the latest reboot or reimagining announcement, but since nobody asked my opinion in the first place, and it’ll happen with or without my approval, I’ve opted to conserve my frustration for matters of more importance. Like:

Whether or not Repo! The Genetic Opera is “good” or not. Again, another subjective argument stemming from an incredibly polarizing movie. On one side, you have the die-hard and will-die-for-it cult fans and on the other the virulent haters-of-all-things-Repo. I don’t run into too many people who are merely “meh” on the subject. Like religion and politics, each camp is sincere in its stance on the film. Of course, I unabashedly adore the film and not just because I know a couple of people in the cast. I think it’s a well-made gothic musical with a sick sense of humor and some terrific performances, not to mention a catchy soundtrack. And for every reason that I enjoy it, there is a cadre of people who hold to the opposite opinion. Except some of these opinions are simply wrong, at least in the way that they’re stated. For instance, the one person who declared that, “No one in the movie can sing!”

“Not even one of the virtuoso sopranos in the world?” Amy countered, citing Sarah Brightman, “Or the musical stage stars like Anthony Head?”

Finally, the critic conceded his point but insisted that the movie was an “interesting failure”. And to that judgment, he’s perfectly entitled. If you don’t think it works, or it’s boring, or confusing, or sloppy, or whatever, that’s all valid. But to declare a sweeping opinion as fact, that’s where the gloves seem to come off. Personally, I think it’s a literate and intelligent melding of rock opera, music hall and grand guignol, but what the hell do I know? I can’t even pronounce Terence No-Good-Nik’s name correctly. But we did buy his comic book (The Molting, which turned out to be quite good).

Getting placed in an “overflow ballroom” has its advantages. Like the rest of the folk in the “overflow” vendor’s room, Amy and I joined the party late. Booked as guests a mere month before the show began, we were placed not in the main guest and vendor ballroom but in one down the hall on the opposite side of the movie and panel rooms. It took some maneuvering and huckstering to alert attendees that the room existed, but Ben and his staff (thanks, Mark!) made sure people knew we were there. Plus, we were much, much closer to the bar. Which only mattered on Sunday when signs went up around the hotel notifying everyone that “personal outside alcohol is not permitted”. Having finished a bottle of home-bought rum and half a box of wine, all we could say in our defense was, “Oops.”

A naturally-growing herb, outlawed by the alcohol, tobacco and lumber industries, had a miraculate medicinal effect on my back. I don’t have much more to add to this except, c’mon fellas—legalize and tax the shit out of marijuana! Even after the high wore off, my back felt fine for hours! Let the pharmaceutical companies turn it into a pill if that will make everyone happy.

There can never be enough zombies in the world. As make-up guy Chris Pezzano and his sidekick Pixie demonstrated, people who dress like zombies are performance artists and endurance athletes. He stayed in that get-up long after the point of sanity, to the point where he wound up with chemical burns on several patches of skin. Dedicated to the dead!

Caroline Williams liked Europa’s Cry. I don’t have anything else to really expound on this but it was really nice to hear. Oh, and Bill Johnson said such nice things to me at one point, I almost cried. Almost. Manly tears. Again, that’s all I have to really say about either experience. These horror people are good friends.

Blackouts at conventions are neat. Having experienced the infamous Cinema Wasteland Blackout of 2006, I’ve become a fan of such occurrences. While there was a modicum of tornado panic as the lights started to flicker before extinguishing altogether, there was a strange energy present in the room when we were thrust into the dim glow of laptop screens and emergency overheads. It was a shared experience we could all tell our grandchildren. And I’m proud to announce that, despite lasting for 72 minutes, the blackout did not cause any of us to go instantly feral or cannibal.

It takes less time to go from PA to Tennessee than it does to return. I’m not sure if there was some sort of time-space distortion or if someone deliberately picked up Pennsylvania and moved it further away during our absence but even with the time-difference, it still took us longer to get back home than it did to get there.

So, should next year come around and we’re not all living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, wearing animal fur and fighting rabid weasels for scraps of carrion (which is apparently what is going to happen during our first year of “Obamacare”), I would recommend that everyone within shouting distance make your way down to next year’s Full Moon show, get a tattoo, get liquored up to dull the pain, and then spend your last bit of money on something gory and independent, be that DVDs, artwork or free drinks for hard-working horror folks. We also accept checks or medicinal herbology. Oh, and pharmaceuticals. No livestock, please.

 

Italian Horror Grindhouse Double Feature - from fps Films and The Hollywood Theater, Pgh, PA

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

On Friday, April 23rd, 2010, fps Films and the infamous Hollywood Theatre located in Dormont, PA, are presenting a Grindhouse Double Feature. The films will be presented with a Short Subject and a reel of vintage Horror Movie Trailers. Everything in the program will be projected on 35mm film! No digital projection on this program. It will be a full evening's entertainment for the incredible price of $6! Tickets will only be sold at the door on the night of the show.

The first film of the Grindhouse Double Feature is REVENGE OF THE DEAD (1983). The title is misleading since it's not a traditional Zombie movie—it's actually a retitle of Pupi Avati's ZEDER. Instead of shuffling brain dead flesh eaters, this film takes a science fiction approach to the resurrection of the dead and it's horrific consequences. To quote the Italian Film Review overview on Facebook:

"In short, Zeder is a little bit Pet Sematary with some Argento-style pseudo-science and a conspiracy that rivals that of Short Night Of Glass Dolls."

The second feature is near-legendary: Dario Argento's masterpiece, DEEP RED (1975). The print we're playing has the screen-title THE HATCHET MURDERS but it is the one and only DEEP RED. Not much else to be said about DEEP RED, but if you're one of those people who haven't heard of it or seen it (for shame!), it's a taut, stylish murder mystery starring David Hemmings (BLOW UP, BARBARELLA, GLADIATOR) and Daria Nicolodi (SUSPIRIA, OPERA) that will absolutely keep you guessing until the very end!

These films are regarded by Italian Giallo (murder mystery) aficionados as two of the finest examples of the genre (and a secret Gabrielle Lavia Double Feature!!!).

It all starts at 10:00pm at The Hollywood Theater in Dormont, PA (On Potomac Avenue, just south of Pittsburgh; a few miles from the Liberty Tubes on Rt. 19). Vomit Bags will be provided for anyone who can't take the HORROR (or if you need to put your popcorn in something)! The Hollywood Theater is a BYOB theater, so feel free to bring the beverage of your choice.

Come one, come all! It's an experience you won't want to miss!

Want more encouragement? Check out the fps Films Grindhouse trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s71DeATAr6A

Post-Wasteland Summations (as much as I can recollect)

Another wonderful Cinema Wasteland has come and gone and, as usual, I feel like Spring has finally arrived. Of course, the temperature plummeted from 80 degrees down to around freezing, bringing with it snow flurries, hail, frogs, locust, the usual lake-effect results. But did that deter any of us? Nay! Nay, I say!

By Sunday, all of us suffering from two-day hangovers were greeted early in the near-noon by the great big flaming ball of death we like to call The Sun (which is a mass of incandescent gas…), searing our blood-shot retinas and revealing to the world that those of us who hadn’t woken up in the same clothes had gotten dressed with the assistance of animated… not birds, the other things—boll weevils.

My personal highlight of the weekend was the surreal moment when mysterious bagpipers arrived and paraded through the bar. Nobody knew where these brave souls came from nor, later, where they went. Nor if they were indeed playing “Amazing Grace” or “Camptown Races”, NOR did it matter! Fortunately, my drunken shriek—“Oh, no! Terrible monsters are attacking those little old ladies!”—went unheard. No bagpipes were harmed during the making of that merriment.

Moments prior to the pipers and a mere half-hour before Jill of LixOnline asurped a corridor for some impromptu hula-hooping, there was some ill-advised inebriated rounds of Twister, wherein many a spectator learned that “Left Foot Red” and “barely-there thong” did not go, so to speak, hand in hand. The less said about the deafening echo the better, but a lightening storm of camera flashes lit up the lobby.

In the “I must be beloved or else I’d be pummel’d” Department, I twice discovered the nippy nature of the weather adverse to my liking, leading me to steal jackets right from the backs of exterior smokers—one person I knew, the other person I knew not. While I brought “borrowed” jackets right back upon my return from my car, I was met with only bemusement. That’s typical of the love amongst the Wastelanders.

My important lesson learned: never laugh while inhaling medicinal medication. It holds up the circle and yields much pointing and mocking. And you risk burning your fingers as you attempt to pass. Also, for future reference, it is ill-advised, after meeting 42nd Street Pete’s daughters, to refer to them directly as “The Spawn of Pete”. Neither of them appreciates it.

Amy and I participated in two film projects—a Canadian-helmed mockumentary starring Rachelle Williams and a non-mocking documentary about Chris Seaver’s Low Budget Pictures oeuvre. As a reward for our participation in the latter, we were given screener copies of two of the newest LBP productions, Deathbone and the oddly touching Geek War, both of which were written, performed and edited by Seaver and company in the car on the way to the show. Six more were filmed in the elevator prior to their screening of I Spit Chew On Your Grave.

All attempts for Michael Varrati, Amy and I to speak only in exposition were thwarted by the demons rum, vodka and “Shut the fuck up!”

The ever-ubiquitous Troma booth was oddly subdued, possibly due to the absence of your Uncle and Mine, Lloyd Kaufman. He was greatly, greatly missed by fans and friends and acquaintances alike. I myself missed being accused of homosexual activity any time I attempted to pass by. And I mean that with all of my heart.

Attention Tom Savini, we have your grandson. In case you were wondering.

To all bootleggers: while I neither condone nor condemn your behavior (not officially, anyway), the MPAA is not a law enforcement organization. If someone comes to your table brandishing an “MPAA Badge” and “confiscates” some of your product, it’s a scam. Please feel free to accompany them outside with your largest neighbors and reduce them to pavement stains. (Legally, I neither condone nor condemn physical violence. Assholery, on the other hand, is not something of which I am a fan unless I am the perpetrator. And even I have more class than that.) If they identify themselves as F.B.I. and their credentials look legitimate, I offer my congratulations for stimulating the economy in such a way that the big boys have taken notice—Kudos!

For Happy Cloud Pictures, it was a banner event, for we unveiled the 10^th Anniversary DVD of a little thing we like to call The Resurrection Game, along with the companion Dead Life Graphic Novel and annotated screenplay / scrapbook. Records show that we gave away more DVDs than we actually sold but that’s primarily due to the fact that nearly everyone in attendance had something to do with this release in one way or another. The included documentary features many faces familiar to the Wasteland family, including Mario Dominick (“Films on the Fringe”), Michael Felsher (Red Shirt Pictures), Art Ettinger (Ultra Violent Magazine) and the immortal 42^nd Street Pete. (If you haven’t ordered your copy yet, you’re the only one. And don’t you feel foolish?)

Mucho thanks extended to Ken and Pam Kish and all the Wasteland staff and family. The wait for October will be an eternity!

Even Manic-Depressive C'Thulu loves CINEMA WASTELAND! 

Snow fun at all

Like many folks across the grand Eastern part of the country, we’ve been buried beneath a metric fuckton of snow. Because of the magnitude of the storm, life down here, particularly in Waynesburg, has descended into martial law. In normal winter conditions, people act like it’s never snowed before, so they drive like blind moles in the midst of grand mal seizures and stock up on perishables. They did that too this time around, but early Friday, before the storm hit, and only because the Super Bowl was pending.

Friday afternoon, the snow came. All of it. At once. Twenty-six inches of snow landed on us like a confused and plummeting sperm whale. Or, perhaps, like God’s white, angry vengeance. It left Pennsylvania paralyzed. Pittsburgh’s poor mayor, Little Lord Ravenstahl, was left stranded at his ski lodge and had to run the city from there. And about as well as he would have had he been in the city anyway.

Then power went out across the state. In our area alone, some eight-point-three billion people were left without heat, water, power, phone, transportation—everything short of gravity. Amy and I were stranded at my parents’ place from Friday to Sunday so we had all the heat and power and water we could stand. But sixty miles away were our four terrified dogs and three ambivalent cats that needed us (in the first case) and were curious about our absence (in the latter case). So finally, Sunday, we braved the highways and headed towards home.

Stopping off for supplies in Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club was a lot like how I imagine the world will be just days into the Mad Max cataclysm. All that neighborly charity we heard about on the news was absent in the capitalistic Meccas. I watched a guy fill his shopping cart with about a dozen snow shovels. Another bought all the D-cell batteries he could find. Neither of these things stood out as too unreasonable—until I heard on the radio about the man who was arrested for buying every gasoline-powered generator from a Home Depot and opening his own black market across the road, selling said machines at double the price he paid. I can only assume the generators were impounded as evidence, though, as none of them made it back to the stores. At one Lowes we stopped in, there were people sleeping on the shelves, waiting for new stock to arrive.

Before we left the familial homestead, we watched a lot of local news. One usually mild-mannered reporter stated that “it’s a good thing that groundhog went back into his hole, or there’d be people lining up to punch him in the mouth!” Which served as a reminder to all that burrowing rodents control the weather. Personally, I felt sorry for all the correspondents slowly freezing to death in the cold as they warned people to stay indoors. I was waiting for the inevitable meltdown—worse than the call for ground hog lynchings—like: “Wanna know what it’s doing out here, Ted? It’s fucking snowing! Do you know where my testicles are right now? Just beneath my ribs, you son of a bitch! Come get me!”

We fought our way down barely-touched roads. PennDot had been, allegedly, working all night to clear the “major arteries”, but because of “the people who stubbornly remained on the roads”, their work was impeded. Thus we passed many an over-turned and plowed-in vehicle on the road sides and medians. Upon finally reaching Waynesburg, we saw downed powerlines everywhere, phone poles snapped in half by the weight of the winter wonderfuck, branches in the road and trees—! Oh, the miserable trees, bowed over, snapped in twain and thrain! Four-ain, in some cases! I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember trees being such pussies when I was a kid. But there they were, surrendering to the white and cutting out all our great and wonderful wire-bound technology.

Along our route, as we inched along a buried state road, a little old man in a red Carola refused to move out of the center of the road and ran an oncoming Jeep aground. And then kept on going! Fortunately, the Waynesburgians are a hearty lot, most of whom who own trucks built primarily for terraforming planets, and were able to tow some of the lost souls from the slush.

Our house was, of course, without power. Or the rest of the amenities you take so much for granted. It was two degrees warmer inside than out; our dogs were traumatized, needing intensive therapy amounting to running around three times and forgetting why they were so mad. The cats didn’t move—not that they were frozen but because they were only vaguely interested as to why we were back. The road from our house, which has been described by friends as “The Borgo Pass Minus the Green Flame” ala Dracula, was impassable. Our phone was out so we had no way of telling anyone we were alive.

Watching our breath mist in the air, then freeze, crack and sift to the floor, we set about making the place habitable. First, we threw on every warm piece of clothing we had, just to the point where we both resembled Randy from A Christmas Story, dragged the mattress from the guest room and set up camp in front of our kitchen gas heater. The blue flame jetting from the wall was off set by the orange flicker of every candle in the house, lit and arranged around the sink. It took some trial and error to rid our four square feet of chill. One problem was known—whoever built our house failed to insulate the outside kitchen wall from the rest of the world, so there was a cold breeze coming in from under the sink. Blankets were hung. Couch cushions were utilized. So was swearing.

Fortunately, I’d bought the national debt’s worth in new books so we had plenty to read by the eye-killing dimness of the candles. Of course, our contacts had frosted over by this point, so it was off to sleep by quarter-to-eight on Sunday.

The rest of the week was no better. Phone calls to Allegheny Power yielded only a recording that said, “We’re working on it. Leave us alone.” Fighting our way like hearty pioneers into town, we took refuge at Stryker’s, the restaurant Amy more or less manages, and stocked up on heat and light. Once there, we called PennDot twice about our road. Amy was polite—“We have a lot of older people here on the hill and they can’t get to the warming center if the road remains in the condition it’s in.”

I wasn’t—“Look, if you don’t plow Bluff Ridge Road, someone is going to die!”

By the next day, plows had come. And buried everyone’s car again.

Allegheny Power’s website, designed more than likely by a one-armed six-year-old, stated that all electricity should be restored to the county by no later than Friday. Come Wednesday morning, that had been updated to “Thursday at 11:59 PM”…i.e. Friday.

Venturing to another Wal-Mart in the hopes of finding something battery-powered (a heater, a toothbrush, a guided missile, whatever…), I got to watch a man throw the tantrum of his life. Upon being told they were sold out of something (I’m still not sure what he was looking for; perhaps his dignity), he swiped the contents of an end cap to the floor. So I opted to browse in Ladies’ Lingerie (the department, wiseguys) until he went away. Since I’d been using our car battery to keep our cell phones charged (on the off chance they could be used for starting fires via some app we hadn’t yet encountered), I decided to top off our gas. I went to three different gas stations around town, each time encountering that neighborhood’s version of The Humongous and his gang of brigands. People cut each other off to get to a pump, they screamed, they cursed, punches were thrown. And these weren’t even stations in danger of running low!

So “community” had devolved into “every man for himself” within hours of the white stuff’s arrival. And silly me, I thought better of the human race. In fact, one of the news sound-bites I saw repeated at least three times on Saturday was a man-on-the-street-in-his-car who told the microphone in his face, “This is a natural disaster. Where the hell is Haiti helping us?”

As of today, we’re still without power or heat or water. We do have phone service, so we can call people who have these amenities and live vicariously through them. But we remain in the dark and marvel at how dependent we’ve become on technology. Even our generation, which witnessed the birth of the internet while we were in our late teens, have somehow gotten umbilically attached to the electric teat. But at least we’re inside. We have some semblance of heat and, therefore, civility.

Otherwise, we too might be gnawing on the bones of our own savagery like those out there. Just seeing what happens to people when it snows makes me shiver at the thought of what will happen when the zombies finally do come. We won’t last ten minutes.